Matthew Booker

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Bio

A native of northern California, I descend from Maine business people (by way of Bellingham, Washington) on my mother’s side and Virginia tobacco farmers (by way of Independence, Texas) on my father’s side. I have been through a variety of educational institutions, including an inner-city nursery school, grades K-8 in a tiny rural school, a suburban Catholic high school, the University of California at Berkeley, Hindu College at the University of Delhi, the University of Oregon, the University of Washington, and Stanford University. Before, during, between, and after educational experiences, I worked with varying success as a dishwasher, farm laborer, bus driver, wine server, carpenter, Forest Service grunt, landscaper, tile-setter’s apprentice, title insurance examiner, field ecologist, and newspaper editor. From 2020 to 2024 I was Vice President for Scholarly Programs at the National Humanities Center.

Website

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3413-7801

Teaching and Research Interests

My research and teaching examines the intersection between human beings and the natural world, mostly in North America. I study the boundaries of history, ecology, law and food production in urban and coastal spaces, using archival, digital humanities, and public history methods.

I am presently at work with Kjell Ericson (Kyoto University) on a history of the transpacific movements of the Japanese or “Pacific” oyster (Crassostrea gigas), the most common species in global mariculture.

Another project is a history of local food production within American cities during the industrial and urban revolutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The project began in a fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich, Germany, advanced at the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Munson Institute on the maritime commons at Mystic, Connecticut, as a Fellow at the National Humanities Center, and as an Alumni Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center.

My first book Down By The Bay: San Francisco’s History Between The Tides (University of California Press) investigates how Native American, Mexican, and American societies used and changed a remarkable natural and urban space, the San Francisco Bay and Delta.

With Chad Ludington I co-edited Food Fights: How the Past Matters to Contemporary Food Debates. In the volume, leading scholars offer historical perspective on our current food debates, from gendered expectations of home cooking to GMOs and industrial food.

I am also interested in the causes and consequences of urban and suburban patterns of living, in using digital tools to analyze and map historical sources, in the history of agricultural technologies and the history of disease both as a physical reality and as a source of fear and spur to policy. Other projects include a a public science effort on the history and dispersal of sourdough.

I worked with schools and museums, including an effort to apply history, landscape architecture and ecological science to adapting to sea level rise in San Francisco Bay (with Susan Schwartzenberg, Fisher Bay Observatory, San Francisco Exploratorium, and Jane Wolff, University of Toronto).

I have spoken to community groups, schools and other institutions about what the humanities offer in facing climate change, how the past holds good ideas for adapting to present crises, and the role of agricultural history in shaping our present.

Teaching: I teach modern U.S. history, environmental history, the history of American suburbs, U.S. agricultural history, historical methods, digital humanities, and advanced research and writing courses for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as special seminars like “1968: The Year Everything Changed.” I also teach outside History. I taught one of NC State’s core interdisciplinary courses, “Humans and the Environment,” as well as the senior capstone in Science, Technology & Society, and team-taught in genetic engineering and society.

I am a recipient of the Lonnie and Carol Poole Award for excellence in teaching, the College of Humanities and Sciences teaching award and was named to the Academy of Outstanding Teachers at N.C. State University.

I am proud of my graduate students, all of whom have completed significant MA or PhD theses and gone on to PhD programs or rewarding careers.

Graduate Advising

Current:

Isabella Bartels, Public History M.A. student, North Carolina State University

Melody Hunter-Pillion, “Masters of Our Own Domain: Oral Tradition Among African American Farmers, Fishers, and Landowners,” Ph.D. Candidate, Department of American Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Completed (at North Carolina State University unless otherwise noted):

2025 Alejandro Ibrahim, “Cultivating a Better Community: The Role of the New Farmers of American in Black Food Justice,” M.A. Public History

2024 Farrah Arnold, “Bridges of Justice: Andrew Young, Patricia Derian, and the Shaping of the Global Rights Revolution,” M.A. History

2023 Lizabeth Wardzinski, “A Model for the World: Tennessee Valley Authority and the Postwar World,” Ph.D., Architecture

2022 Nicholas Serrano, “Landscape History of the Triangle Region, North Carolina,” Ph.D., Landscape Architecture

2022 Lauren Vilbert, “Tourism’s Past, Present and Future on the Outer Banks,” Ph.D., Public History

2020 Laura Hepp Bradshaw, “Kilowatt Kingdom: Gender, Race, and Power in the Tennessee Valley, 1917-1958,” Ph.D, History, Carnegie Mellon University

2020 Andre Taylor, “Memory and History in the Expansion of Rice Cultivation from South Carolina into North Carolina,” MA, Public History (Co-chair)

2020 Angela Stiefbold, “Rural Character and Rural Economy: Preserving Farmland in Bucks County Pennsylvania, 1930-1990,” Ph.D, History, University of Cincinnati

2019 Sophia Webster, “Killer-Rescue Gene Drive for Population Replacement in the Dengue Vector Aedes Aegypti,” Ph.D., Entomology

2019 Megan Serr, “How to Become One of the Islanders: Assessing Farallones Island House Mice Colony Resistance to Secondary Establishers,” PhD., Zoology

2018 Dean Bruno, “A Place Called Home: Dispossession and Remembrance of a Central New York Landscape,” PhD, History, Vanderbilt University

2017 Cameron Mills, “College Men Go to War: The American University Union in Europe during the First World War,” M.A., History (Chair)

2017 Gabriel Zilnik, “Evolution of Insects in Agricultural Systems,” MS, Entomology

2016 Rachel Jacobson, “Raleigh’s Greenways and Racial Exclusion,” M.A., Public History (Co-chair)

2016 Charlton Brown, “Analysis of Wetland Communities along Historic Ditches in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, North Carolina,” M.S., Forestry and Environmental Resources

2015 Madison Cates, “White Men Without Side-Arms: Moderation, Manhood, and the Politics of Civil Rights in North Carolina, 1960-1965,” M.A., History

2014 Stacy Roberts, “How We Have Forgotten: Chemical Strawberries and Their Archived Alternatives in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” M.A., History (Chair)

2014 Jesse Hall, “The Nation’s River: An Environmental History of the Potomac,” M.A., History (Chair)

2011 Shane Cruise, “Blighted People in a Blighted Place: Disease, Environment, and Slum Clearance in Winston-Salem, NC, 1880-1960,” M.A., History

2010 Laura Hepp Bradshaw, “Naturalized Citizens: Conservation, Gender, and the Tennessee Valley Authority during the New Deal,” M.A., History (Co-chair)

2009 Robert Paine Shapard, “Building an Inland Sea: Clarks Hill Lake on the Upper Savannah and the Twentieth-Century Lives, Land, and River Hidden by its Waters,” M.A., History (Chair)

2009 Zach Gillan, “Consumerism and Radical Protest in the 1960s: Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, and the Diggers,” M.A., History

2008 Gabriel Lee, “Constructing the Outer Banks: Land Use, Management, and Meaning in the Creation of an American Place,” M.A., History (Chair)

2008 L. Dean Bruno, “’Once a Home, Now a Memory:’ Dispossession, Possession and Remembrance of the Landscape of the Former Seneca Army Depot,” M.A., History (Chair)

2008 April Grecho, “From Knowledge to Management: Assessing and communicating the efficacy of sustainable resource education programs in the U.S.,” Ph.D., Forestry and Environmental Resources

2008 Neil Shafer Oatsvall, “War on Nature, War on Bodies: The United States’ Chemical Defoliant Use During the Vietnam War and Its Consequences,” M.A., History (Chair)

2008 Andrea Gray, “Supper on the Trail: How Food and Provisions Shaped Nineteenth-Century Westward Migration,” M.A., History

2008 Leslie Erin Hawkins, “’I Am History, Don’t Destroy Please’: Three Gristmills and Their Communities in Wake County, North Carolina,” M.A., Public History

2007 Scott McDuffie, “James Lawson: Leading Architect and Educator of Nonviolence and Nonviolent Direct Action Protest Strategies During the Student Sit-in Movement of 1960,” M.A., History

Recent responsibilities

2025- Program Committee, American Society for Environmental History conference

2025- Advancement Council, University of North Carolina Press

2022-2024 – Advisory Board, Triangle Scholarly Communications Institute

2020-2024 – Vice President for Scholarly Programs, National Humanities Center

Since 2019 – Board of Governors, University of North Carolina Press

2017-2020 – Director, Science, Technology & Society program, NCSU

2016-2023 – Board of Directors, Forest History Society, Durham, NC

Since 2015 – Faculty affiliate, Southeast Climate Science Center, USGS/NCSU

2015-2020 – Archive of Agricultural Genetic Engineering and Society, NCSU

2015-2020 – Coordinator, Visual Narrative cluster, Chancellors Faculty Excellence Program, NCSU

2014-2020 –  Faculty affiliate, Center for Genetic Engineering and Society, NCSU

Area(s) of Expertise

Global aquaculture, environmental history, agricultural history, food history, urban history